The solution is products that are durable, are repairable, upgradeable, and also whenever possible use sustainable and recycled materials. The most environmentally friendly product is the one that never gets made, because the old one still works.

Unfortunately that wouldn't be good for Apple as a business (and it's definitely against their corporate culture), unless consumers demanded that en masse, forcing them to change to serve the market.

On the other hand, Apple isn't blameless because they push out a new phone every year with a huge advertising campaign to encourage you to upgrade.

I do use Apple products, and generally like them except for some of their most recent changes. I tend to hang on to them longer than most people. I'll never upgrade a working iPhone until it can't get security updates. Still using a 2013 MacBook Air that has years of life left.

They haven't pledged to do shit.

They've said they would like to, whilst simultaneously not taking the steps they absolutely could take today to reduce their environmental impact, like making their phones more readily user-serviceable and tweaking their screen design so that they don't shatter on a minor drop (because honestly, how many long term iphone owners do you know who haven't ever had to replace a screen?)

And its made from banana rosin.

Certainly not blameless, they're the ones who pushed the market into glued in batteries etc preventing user maintenance or upgrades to force new purchases. Very, very ungreen behaviour.

In the new and improved iPhone, batteries are a thing of the past. With our standard apple cable, you just keep your device plugged in at all times.

New charger format, too. And no speaker. And worse battery.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot)

"One day, we'd like to be able to build new products with just recycled materials, including your old products," Apple says on its updated Environment site.

Apple will double down on investments like Liam, the robot that breaks iPhones down into component parts, and it plans to continue to encourage customers to return products through the Apple Renew recycling program.

While Apple plans to source more of its materials from recycled goods, Jackson says that though a "product that lasts is really important," the company doesn't have plans to make its devices easier to repair to increase longevity.

Won't people stop being mean to the poor international corporation and just believe their claims!

Still refusing to sell genuine parts to small repair shops so your device can be repaired at a reasonable price instead of apple selling you a replacement device.

To be fair, Apple said the same thing about going 100% renewable energy about 5 years ago and people thought it was a long shot. Their use of renewable energy to power its corporate facilities, retail stores, and data centers worldwide went from 16 percent in 2010 to 96 percent in 2016. Now if only they can influence the factories that manufacture their products.

I'm just glad they're setting the example for everyone in their sector. They're doing more in the recycling space now than any of their competitors.

plugged in

It's like you don't even "upgrade". The next iphone will bolt directly to the wall socket.

And once they make it more efficient, they'll create a dongle for it.

To be fair their screen tech is pretty good. I've seen just as many broken iPhones as any other phone. Plus, I see more iPhones in a day, and there are a number of android phones that have plastic screens. Statistically, it makes sense for it to appear as though iPhones break easier than any other phone. Personally, I've only broken one iPhone 6 Plus screen. My friend with an Galaxy S7 has broken three.

Also, a user-serviceable device doesn't necessarily mean more environmentally friendly. The average consumer wouldn't tear down their devices to fix a broken component anyway. Yes, on tech forums it seems like everyone is willing to, but really look at the average iPhone user. User-serviceable is a waste of time for such a large product line. Apple can tear down their own devices in-store to fix problems, and they have the Liam robot line custom made to recycle old iPhones (currently in testing before moving on to other products). That's pretty eco-friendly.

What are the odds this entire thread is still going to be Apple bashing?

Fuck reddit. "Anyone different than me is wrong, and if you disagree you're a moron"

And then we've finally come full circle back to phones mounted on the wall.

Tesla doesn't offer 3rd party repairs and I don't see people complaining about them. It's even worse given that a Tesla owner is currently waiting 7+ months for his car to get fixed.

Reddit sure likes to pick its favorites. There are a lot of parallels between Tesla and Apple in terms of business practices and it's amazing to see one get shit on while the other gets worshipped.

Apple does something bad:

4000 Comments, 10000 Upvotes, thread full of bashing

Apple does something good:

No upvotes, barely any comments, people STILL bashing them

It's almost sad.

honestly... like what is up with all the Apple hate?? You'd think that Reddit would be at least neutral towards them, considering their proven privacy protection/data protection history, but it's constant mindless Apple bashing... rip

I'm all for replaceable batteries - if, for no other reason, that you can manually shut down a frozen device - but I work in retail dealing with cell phones and I can count on one hand the number of people who've asked to replace a battery. The vast majority of people simply don't care.

They named their trash sorting machine Liam

e- To it's credit Liam is a pretty sweet robot doing a good job, but it is disappointing Apple have put up a big show about all this without acknowledging that the voluntary recycling of Iphones is a drop in the ocean compared to the extremely negative overall impact giant tech companies like them have had on the declining global environment.

I guess it will make Apple consumers feel a lot better about themselves.

I think it's because less people own teslas.

It did something good? All i see is it saying its going to do something good.

The all-new Apple iCycle®

What a stupid point, all that matter is in what pot your money ends up in. If there is more money in the solar power pot the more money will be invested there. That is how it works everywhere. You want them to build a new grid for renewable energy only?

No, didn't you get the memo? APPLE BAD

Super ambitious but I like it. All electronics companies should strive to do this.

The one that actually makes hardware?

Damn Reddit really does have a hard on for hating Apple for every little thing they do.

Announcing..

Try saying this about google, tesla, samsung, or one of Reddit's other loved companies and see how many downvotes you get.

Apple is one of the greenest companies in tech, sorry you're butt hurt you broke your phone brother

It's strange how the Apple hating crowd will try to spin anything positive into a negative when it comes to Apple — even when they are working towards things you care about, like the environment and customer privacy.

Samsung: PHONES ARE EXPLOSIVE

Tesla: go to literally any investment sub, giant flame wars about them

Google: anytime anything to do with privacy comes up they get roasted.

The fuck you talking about?

Same thing goes for non apple products...

Sometimes Reddit can’t resist hating on a big company, even one that mostly shares their interests.

It's a common thing for Android users to rag on iPhones for, although it doesn't really hash out. I didn't realize it was a thing until I unfortunately broke my screen and an android using coworker gleefully ranted about how everyone with an iphone had a broken screen... naturally the office was full of iphone users with non-cracked phones.

The "bulging glass curve" screens were my downfall. My first and only cracked screen was the iPhone 6. Of course, that was supposed to use special hardened glass, but the factory for that went bust before production.

I was used to no-casing it before that, and all of my phones had hella-dings on the metal edges thanks to drops, and the odd throw, into concrete.

You guys really find anything to complain about, huh? The Apple bashing is humorous. Yes they are not the most environmentally friendly company but I bet half of you wear Nike shoes or clothing and they're made in sweat shops. Either don't be hypocritical or be quiet.

Losing your phone is a thing of the past with our new revolutionary technology!

Tell that to Google. Most android devices never ship with or even ever get the current OS. And it has everything to do with politics and bullshit. Nothing to do with hardware.

Google could have chosen to have a system like bios or only give android play store to those who followed strict guidelines. But they chose to go after market share instead.

Apple has about 10% of the global market share. Google's android has about 75%

Who really can make the impact here?

Because there's that whole Android circlejerk and they're all trying to convince themselves they made the right purchase by mindlessly bashing Apple and feeling superior to its users.

Just imagine how different the comments would be if the headline was "Tesla pledges to stop mining raw materials and use 100% reusable material"

And they gave, uhh, him an entire ad spot, too.

Edit: Just wanted to clarify, I think this is awesome. That is all.

Uh thats how it always works. If no renewable sources are nearby then it would be inefficient to draw that renewable energy from afar.

That's how it works in my country. You have the choice between hundreds of energy providers some of which are 100% renewable. You pay them the price for renewable.

While the actual physical energy comes from the local energy provider, the energy is nationally thrown into a "pot" where they are auctioned. So by paying for renewable, you make sure that renewable energy is used somewhere else.

In that case you are effectively using renewable, even though your energy might come from coal.

It's the exact same as paying someone via bank wire. You pay the bank and the other branch of the bank pays out to the receiver. The money doesnt physically travel to the receiver and that would be very inefficient to do so.

To be fair, the iPad 2 came out 6 years ago. I don’t know of many technology products that continue to have software support after that long.

“We’re actually doing something we rarely do, which is announce a goal before we’ve completely figured out how to do it. So we’re a little nervous, but we also think it’s really important, because as a sector we believe it’s where technology should be going.”

You get what you pay for.

There's a lot of non-apple products that are just utter crap and will be painfully slow on day one. These products will be replaced and discarded frequently. (I'm talking stuff like $200 laptops and $80 phones...)

That said there are lots of non-apple products that are just as good or better than the stuff apple produces. Just don't expect it to be much cheaper, if at all.

Same here - iPhone user since 2008, never had any screen break. Honestly, I've only had to replace the battery on my 6S, other than that, I haven't had a single fault with them.

The renewable energy claims are mostly smoke and mirrors. They aren't actually using only renewable for those things, they're playing games with the numbers to make it seem better. Here's a Forbes article on it and another article here.

TL;DR - You and your neighbor are the only two customers of a power company that generates 50% of its power from solar and 50% from coal. Once on the wires it's all just electricity. You pay your neighbor $10 so you can say that you're using 100% solar power, and he's using 100% coal power. In reality this isn't true, and at night you're most definitely using 0% solar.

EDIT: For those arguing the point - if an Apple data center shuts down for a week and uses no electricity, was less coal burned as a result? If the answer is yes then they're not using 100% renewable power, they're using quasi-100% renewable power.

Seeing a lot of Apple hate on here (per usual on Reddit) but I hope most of you know that regardless of your views on Apple, they are the greenest technology company in the world.

Out of the three, I would associate them more with the Zerg personally, with all the cheap lives thrown relentlessly at their factories. Maybe they'll pledge to recycle the suicides.

Right. Apple doesn't control the grid. This is how we've set up the energy infrastructure—it's markets you buy from.

The daily Apple-hating orgy porgys are literally fuсking retarded, and are repeated almost word for word like a 4chan copypasta

Every single thread they'll be some dude from /sub/pcmasterrace smugly boasting how he's got better specs for half the price

Every single thread they'll be some dude from /sub/android shitting on Apple for not being Android.

There is already an abundance of rare earths. The reason there are virtually zero significant REE mines outside of China is because China has such an abundance of the stuff, and can produce it so cheaply, that they can essentially set the price of rare earths to whatever they want, which is far lower than the levels most people can produce them at. Recycling REE's is already cost ineffective, and the amount of REE's actually used in Apple computers is miniscule.

EDIT: I feel I should clarify. Geologically there is a distinction between 'Rare Earth Minerals' (which typically refers to the lanthanides plus Scandium and Yttrium), and 'Rare Metals' or 'Rare Materials' (which often refers to things like Gallium or Osmium, but in common parlance can mean a whole bunch of different elements). The news media mixes up these terms all the time, which makes their use in common dialog even more inconsistent. Apple vaguely referred to 'rare materials', who knows what they mean by that.

I had no idea it existed, but that's awesome. Also terrible title on this, the quote is a future aspiration and not a pledge, if they were truly concerned about the environment they'd try to make longer lasting devices as well, which they clearly said they aren't doing.

Bro are you having a stroke?

I love my LG G4, a former flagship device as you know. I bought a spare battery and charger for not a lot, it's great for days by the seaside when friends are phoneless later in the day (poor signal uses battery faster) :)

The simultaneous orgasms would probably shift the earth's magnetic poles.

Surprise surprise, people who actually know stuff about tech don't hate Apple as much as /sub/all.

This is such a pointless point. Replacing an entire board at once does not have anything to do with the recyclability of the components on the board. It makes repairs more expensive (but less common as the soldered boards are sturdier) but has nothing to do with macroscopic environmental impact so you are either just circle-jerking on purpose or could stand to learn some more. The products are as modular as they need to be. You may not like the design personally, but again, it's not related to ruining the environment.

The reason I have so many apple devices is because I can hold onto them for so long. The only ones I've retired was an iphone 4, and a 2009 mbp. Went to a 6, and a Macbook Air, about 2 years ago, and don't think I'll have to get anything new for another 2-4 years. Sure, they're overpriced, but they certainly are sturdy.

Fewer

Probably because it's easier just to buy a new device.

Back before smart devices appeared, you could get spare batteries for most popular phones. You literally just opened up the back, popped it out, and put the new one in.

Hell, I could do that with my old Galaxy S2. I even had an external battery charger, which was useful.

It's not physically perfect though. It lacks the memory and CPU to run modern versions of operating systems. Microsoft doesn't release special forks of Windows 10 for underpowered ten year old computers - why would Apple, or any company do that?

We dick riding Elon now, get with the program.

Well then people have even less of a reason to be mad

Their current price point is literally such a huge profit margin for them that increasing the costs of production doesn't necessarily mean they have to raise the price point.

However, they will. We all know it.

Oh shit I just realised that it's 2017 now. When I saw your first sentence saying my 2013 MacBook, I was wondering why you were talking about it because it was just an year or two old. I'm still stuck in 2015

Right. And there's I believe two new rare earth mines coming into swing in the next ten or so years that'll throw off the cost effectiveness of recycling for quite some time.

Egh. That opinion/hit piece by Alex Epstein is hilariously transparent. Clearly that guy is preaching to his own choir.

Not to discredit your point, AFAIK you are correct about Apple. It looks like a lot of The legwork was done by Wired.

Apple SAYS they will do something good:

FTFY

Hey man it's not like the company is virtually integrated where they buy materials from other companies who sure as hell don't have a recycling policy right?

They're​ rare in comparison to other useful elements naturally found on Earth such as iron and silicon.

WE REQUIRE MORE MINERALS, then

Actually Apple doesn't have any tools in-store to do meaningful teardowns on products currently under warranty. All their new products, computers included, are moving to on-board components that can't be replaced. Only the screen seems to be replaceable on most devices now.

because honestly, how many long term iphone owners do you know who haven't ever had to replace a screen?

No one in my family has. Other things, like power buttons, charger ports, etc, yes, but never screens.

I have also never had to replace my screen on any of my android devices.

I just simply don't drop my phone. I am extremely careful. I don't really understand how people shatter their screens ALL THE TIME. Like ya, accidents happen, but people make it sound like they shatter their screen once per month. How? I just.. I pay $1200 for my phones, I carry them really carefully, I put them on tables, I put them in deep pockets.

It's in their environmental responsibility report, which means there's an expectation of progress YoY. Every year they will be sharing data that shows they're mining less and recycling more. They'll keep doing that until they close the loop and reach 100% recycling. That's the point.

DON'T SAY THE T WORD IN FRONT OF THE KIDS

We're going to aim to this environmentally friendly goal

YEAH BUT YOU ASSHOLES DIDN'T DO IT YET /s

And at the same time every redditor is also pretending Tesla can mass produce the Model 3 and provide support for it.

It's a black mark on reddit's cred, it's literally a bunch of kids spouting fiction they haven't the faintest idea about. The average redditor has a senior-citizens grasp of technology and have opinions which have no factual basis whatsoever.

Even a casual read over apple's own environmental and labour reports debunk most the fabrications spread on reddit and this thread.
Amusingly I've even read comments where people try to claim that apple falsify this data, with little to no idea of the legal implications and how the information is sourced.

If they actually do this I will buy an apple product.

There's being sceptical, then there's being a le redditeur

like the company's socially and environmentally progressive policies that they have been very active in for the past 15 or so years?

I don't understand this notion on Reddit that Apple is some shallow company that'll do anything to gouge people. They have been one of the largest supporters of solar energy, medical research, LGBT rights, STEM education, and information security for a very long time. Often times they have stood by their progressive views at the risk of damaging sales.

Same, my 2013 MacBook Air is still fast on OS X and Windows 10. As is any device with a SSD and more than a shit processor with decent ram.

After rudimentary specs it's all on the enclosure and my laptop has held up great for 4 years and 1 drop. Plan on using it for maybe two more years.

Then I'll have to see how microsofts surface book and apples equivalent compare.

(Of course it isn't a gaming computer but doesn't bill itself as one, takes down all tasks with relative ease except maybe real video editing and newer games. And the battery hasn't held up as well maybe 8 ish plus hours instead of the 12+ I was getting super new with little stuff on it. And sub 12 second boot times are just cool.)

A few years from now: Apple pledges to build next iPhone using materials sourced from apples.

I like apple because they've said time and time again they won't share my information with advertisers/etc and to my knowledge they haven't. It's rare to find actual 'privacy' nowadays, especially with our current government.

Too be fair the robot looks pretty cool and if I had built a cool robot like that I'd want to show it off too

Don't you know /sub/worldnews is just a bigger /sub/technology? We worship Elon here and shit on Apple every chance we have. Get with the culture!

Oh no, you'll need another device. One that has no ports and you'll need a tertiary device to interface with it.

Edit: spelling.

"Of course, that was supposed to use special hardened glass, but the factory for that went bust before production."

If you're referring to GTAT, I think they went bust BECAUSE Apple didn't pick them to manufacture their screens. I guess the test batches didn't pan out for their sapphire screen tech and when Apple pulled out their stock tanked. I know because I sold that stock as quickly as I could when it was happening.

Apple funded the manufacturing of the factory and then cancelled their screen order when the company never managed to make screens with more than a 30% success rate during its manufacturing trials. The factory closed and the company went poof.

I've had 5 iPhones and never broken a screen

They said the same thing about renewable energy in 2010, and 6 years later were something like 96% renewable.

I agree its a terrible name. And I say this as someone that used to work in the REE industry. I prefer to call them 'Lanthanides'. They are not rare at all, its just rare to find them concentrated to a degree that would make their extraction profitable, because their extraction / separation / metallurgy is extremely complicated and expensive.

Hardly a "pledge." More a vague aspiration.

Pretty much fine if you keep it clean.

I mean even a 15-20 year old consumer computer will run just fine with something lightweight like puppy linux.

But these days performance requirements for normal users has plateaued, 6 years doesn't mean much anymore.

Even if it was free I probably wouldn't upgrade my 4 year old Macbook for example.

Despite websites becoming increasingly bloated JS monstrosities, a 6 year old computer works fine for people that need a Word/Facebook/Email machine.

Has your experience been different?

Remember the FBI shooter iphone thing? Nearly every single comment started out with "I don't support Apple, but".

And that's not to say they haven't been making some poor choices lately. However those are still well built and well performing poor choices.